Across the Long Sea (5 page)

“What happened?”

Mal arched his brows. “I became vocent, Sebastian. It's been a while; I assumed you'd hear.”

“Most powerful man in the kingdom,” his cousin quoted, less than impressed. “I wiped your tears the day word of Rowan's loss made Selkirk, or have you forgotten? No.” He swiveled and spat. “I meant the lad. What happened to his face and hands? More of your magic?”

“No.”

Sebastian waited a beat, then shrugged. “Come to pass on the title, have you? You'll not be wanting it, I imagine.”

“You imagine correctly,” Mal said. “It was never mine to begin with.”

“Nay, it was Rowan's.” Seb pursed his lips in thought. “Your mam still believes he'd have done well by it, but I'm not so sure.”

“Oh?” Gulls were diving the pier, shrieking. Mal caught a glimpse of black wings, and winced.

“Nay. Rowan never shed a tear in his life. Even as the tide dragged him down, he didn't so much as squeak. Loved him like a brother, I did, but nothing ever roused him to passion, do you understand?”

Mal frowned.

“Music,” he said after a moment of thought. “Dancing. Good drink. Pretty lasses.”

“You remember differently than the rest of us.” Sebastian rolled his shoulders. The hem of his faded tunic flapped in the rising winds. “No matter. It's been a long time, h'ain't it? Come aboard?” It was a challenge.

“Nay,” Mal replied. “The pirates don't look friendly.”

Sebastian stiffened. “Pirates?” His bare, cracked feet scratched on the planks as he turned to stare up at his ship. “We haven't any pirates aboard.”

“You've plenty of them,” Mal said, mildly, showing his teeth. “Or did you think the rogues wouldn't haunt the ship drowned them beneath her keel? Your afterdeck's cluttered with vengeful spirits, cousin.”

Sebastian's wrinkled face slackened. “Nay, not truly?” He shuddered. “Don't you go spreading rumors, now, Mal. No good seaman will willingly sail a ghost-­ridden ship. Word gets out she's haunted,
The Laughing Queen
's dead in the water.

Mal fixed his smile in place as Liam popped over the rails.

“I've no patience for rumors,” he said, watching as Liam half clamored, half jumped from ladder to pier. “I'll see you tonight, Seb, at the dedication?”

“Aye,” his cousin muttered, distracted. “I'll be there.”

“Good.” Mal put his arm around Liam's sweaty neck, steering the lad away.

They walked the rest of the pier in silence, ignored by merchant and seaman both. Liam goggled over the remaining ships, but showed no inclination to visit another deck.

“You're thoughtful,” Mal said as they turned about again, faces to Selkirk, wind against their backs. “Not cut out for adventure on the high seas?”

Liam shrugged, not quite dislodging Mal's arm.

“It ain't—­isn't—­that, my lord,” he said. “The swords were fine, and the flintlock puzzling. It shoots a lead ball, my lord, like a canon, Fiennes said. With enough force to pass clean through a man, and kill him dead.”

They stepped off the pier and onto uneven sand. Morning was just giving way to afternoon, but already small boys and girls were using long, thin Selkirk matches to light the torches on the beach. Clouds raced overhead, and the young attendants had to shelter the flickering match-­heads with their hands.

“That's what's bothering you, the flintlock? You likely won't see another in your lifetime, lad. They're extremely rare and by all accounts both difficult to manufacture and dangerously unreliable.”

“Not that, my lord.”

“Then what?”

“They've no respect, here, my lord. For you, or for the crown. They whisper behind your back, and spit. And I heard 'em call His Majesty a cheat and dishonest.”

“Ah.” Malachi urged Liam north along the beach, away from Selkirk and her pier, away from the torches. It didn't escape his notice when Jacob left his game with the gulls and followed after, wheeling lazily overhead. “Most of the ­people on the coast have never had cause to make the trip into Wilhaiim, lad. To them, the king is only an idea, or an image. They watch their coin go to taxes, and see little in return. They've more local concerns; the tides, the weather, the catch. Even pirates are a rare threat these days; spooky stories used to scare infants in the cradle.”

Liam scuffed his sandals, kicking up sand. His hands were clenched at his side.

“His Majesty shouldn't put up with it.”

“They pay their taxes, Liam. In truth, vague grumblings are natural, and nothing to worry yourself over.”

The boy's low reply was made incomprehensible by a crash of feathers. Jacob landed hard on Mal's shoulder, claws piercing linen, tongue clicking in his beak. Mal swore.

“God's balls, monster. That hurts!”

“What's that, my lord?” Liam asked, sulk interrupted. He pointed ahead, up the beach.

“That—­” Mal reached up and tried to forcibly loosen the raven's claws in his flesh. Jacob chortled, unrepentant. “—­is where we're walking to. One last thing to show you before we return to the keep.”

Liam cocked his head.

“It looks like part of a building, my lord. Sticking right out of the sand.”

“It is,” Mal answered. “Run ahead and take a look. There's a plaque, I believe, in the royal lingua. You'll be practiced enough to read it, I believe.”

The boy didn't need to be told twice. Grievances forgotten for the moment, he galloped along the beach, scattering seaweed and gulls as he went. Mal followed more slowly, Jacob huffing in his ear.

“You know what it is, I imagine,” Mal said.

The bird didn't bother to answer.

The stretch of beach was narrow, a silver strand between water and high cliffs. The spring winds, trapped against stone, howled. It had been on a similar night ten years earlier when the islands sank, that Gerald Doyle had sent Mal home to help with rescue and recovery, in the hopes that his blossoming magics might provide some assistance.

They hadn't. Instead he'd waited on the sand, collecting limp, waterlogged bodies from skiff and rowboat and skipper, and in the dawn, directly from the rolling waves. He'd quickly lost count of corpses, but the spirits of the island dead hadn't let him forget; they'd shrieked and wailed and called for their lost even as he pulled new bodies from the sea.

He'd wept with the violation of it, his inability to keep them out, the ineffectiveness of the few cants and mediations he'd begun to learn and his father had been embarrassed for his youngest son's display of emotion. And angry. Later, after the island dead were piled and burnt according to their custom, while the flames were still hot, reaching high against the cliffs, the Selkirk had beaten Mal for cowardice, then sent him back to his foster father, ears still ringing with threats and recriminations.

The Serranos of Selkirk are men, Malachi, and not babes to weep over the sea's fickle temper
, the Selkirk had said between gritted teeth.
You're more flatlander than sea
lord, now. Return home and tend your gentle fields.

“My lord,” Liam said, startling Mal from the past. “Is it a grave?”

“A monument,” Mal corrected. The beach was quiet, peaceful, those distraught spirits long moved on, or seeking shelter from the wicked wind. “There were too many corpses to inter, twelve times twelve at the end. Selkirk lit a great bonfire, and dedicated their souls to whatever gods they best loved, and stacked the bodies in the flames.”

“What's this then?” Liam squinted at the monument. “Is it a rafter? It's not part of a ship. I've never seen wood like this, striped and spotted.”

“The islanders call it monkey wood.” Mal regarded the beam. It had taken five of Selkirk's men together to dig down deep enough to secure the monument against the tide. By all accounts they'd sunk it the length of a man into the earth, and still the beam over-­topped the tallest man on the beach. “A support joist, part of a canopy or building. It floated past with the corpses; a few of my father's men swam out and hauled it back in.”

He stretched past Liam, knocked the wood with this knuckles. “Hard as rock, but apparently very light. Can you read the plaque?”

Liam sank to his heels in the sand. He ran one finger over engraved bronze, touching each letter as he mouthed.

“All life springs from the waves. All life returns to the sea.” Liam frowned. “But that's not right, my lord. We bury our dead in the ground, far away from
any
water, lest the bones rise and float away.”

“Flatland customs differ from coastal, just as island customs differ from both. Islanders burn their dead, flatlanders bury their dead. The coastal clans prefer to send the dead back into the sea.”

Liam's face lit with curiosity. “How's that, my lord? How's it done?”

“Tonight,” Mal promised. “You'll have the witnessing of it.”

Jacob clicked his tongue, unimpressed.

 

Chapter Four

M
AL
REGARDED
HIS
mother over the Selkirk's silver circlet.

“It makes the most sense,” he said. “I didn't expect you to argue the point.”

“His Majesty gave you to me. Fourteen days. Two sennight,” Lady Selkirk said. “You're father's not been laid to rest. He's been dead barely a day. Don't force the title on me just yet.”

“Force?” Mal echoed, baffled. “I thought you wanted it. You've always wanted it. You married father for the title.”

“I married your father for his ships. At the time Selkirk had only the two, but they were the envy of the west.”

“The ships come with the title,” Mal said. “And now there are seven.”

His mother shrugged and lifted her pointed chin, a gesture he recognized as his own. She'd shed her seaman's garbed and donned instead the black robes of mourning. Her feet were bare, her hair brushed out over her shoulders, curls shining in the light off her bedroom hearth.

She took the circlet in two hands, studied the twist of wire and sculpted silver flowers with indifference. It reminded him, absurdly, of Liam's flower crown. He wondered if the boy had snatched another kiss for the keeping of that treasure.

“The lasses weave crowns every season after bloom,” his mother said. Mal wondered, not for the first time, whether he'd inherited some of his magics from his mam's line. She had an uncanny talent for reading mind and heart.

But she'd always matched the Selkirk handily on the water, so perhaps not.

“It's a difficult thing to do,” she continued. “With all the thorns.”

Mal took the circlet from her hands. It was heavier than he thought, the silver tarnished around the rose petals, worn smooth in places. There were indeed thorns, tiny nubs etched into the vines.

She didn't move when he set it on her head. Then she sighed, a long gust of resignation and sorrow.

“I know.” Mal also wore the black of mourning; the vocent's color, if not the vocent's uniform, and he felt more himself. “It was supposed to be Father's forever. And if not forever, then Rowan. You know better than I; nothing ever goes as planned.

Lady Selkirk glanced at the ring on his finger, but said nothing.

“It looks well on you,” Mal said. “If you can't wear it with joy, wear it with pride.”

She took his hand, then, surprising Mal when she pressed his palm to her dry lips. Then she sighed again.

“The sails are up. Joseph will be waiting, and the rest,” she said. “Shall we go?”

He nodded, and set his hand on her forearm, and she let him lead her into the dusk.

A
BONFIRE
BURNED
at the center of the bailey, sweet grass gathered and bolstered with dried driftwood, then lit by flame carried across the courtyard from the temple brazier. The wind had died to a soft breeze; for once the howl of spring against Selkirk's walls was silenced.

Smoke rose from the bonfire in lazy flags, breaking apart just above the battlements, joining purple clouds overhead. Biaz and Brother Josef stood together against the fire, somber in their own mourning kit, a shawl emblazoned with the rose across the priest's stooped shoulders.

Seamen and merchants alike were come up from the pier to join the keep's inhabitants. They stood in a loose crowd, waiting, ragged and uneasy, most displaying sincere expressions of grief. Cook and her pantry maids hovered in a knot. The older woman wept openly while her lasses eyed up the youngest sailors.

Selkirk's guard stood on the battlements, ringing the courtyard, faces turned to the fire, backs set to the sea.

“Is he here?” Lady Selkirk asked, low.

Mal glanced around the bailey and along the battlements, sorting the faces of the still living from the faces of the dead.

“He's not.”

“I didn't think so. He was a coward at the end, whittled to nothing by pain and fear.”

Mal, who couldn't imagine his father less than imposing, found he had no reassurances to give.

“Red sky,” his mother said, the fishwives' prediction, then she shrugged off Mal's hand and strode forward to meet the priest. Past the battlements the setting sun had indeed turned the clouds from purple to scarlet and orange.

“What's it mean?” Liam detached himself from the shadow of the stables, Jacob crouched on his shoulder like a bony growth.

“Red sky in morning, sailors take warning,” Mal quoted. “Red sky at night, sailors delight. It's an old weather telling. And true more often than not. Tomorrow will be clear skies and safe sailing, no serpents or sting-­fish to trouble our ships.”

The men and women in the bailey bent a single knee as Lady Selkirk approached the bonfire. Biaz and Brother Josef rose and took three strong men with them into the temple. When they returned, they had his father's body, wrapped in a sigil-­painted sail, balanced on their shoulders. The Selkirk's corpse preceded his wife and son to the west gate. As soon as Lady Selkirk passed without, the rest of the keep rose from the scrape of oyster shells and followed.

Liam wouldn't lower himself to hold Mal's hand, but his fingers gripped the edge of his master's tunic.

“It got dark fast,” he said. “And the torches aren't lit. We'll trip down the steps and break our heads. Shouldn't you send a light, my lord?”

“Nay. Watch.”

As if on cue Brother Josef began singing the high, thin burial chant reserved for lords of desert and sea and plain. Temple lore, so different from the innate magic of the magus, but nevertheless powerful if done well, and Brother Josef knew his craft.

The sigils painted on the Selkirk's burial shroud turned from indigo to star-­pale, and then began to glow, each bright enough to make Mal blink. The priest's chant grew loud and sweet, and the shroud burned bright, illuminating stairs and sand and wave.

“It's beautiful,” Liam whispered. “Is it magic?”

“Book learning,” Mal answered. “The proper words in the proper order, and the sigils and herbs to help.”

“A chicken supper is a chicken supper no matter how it's cooked,” Liam replied.

Mal hid a snort behind a cough, and hoped his mam thought it was sorrow and not amusement.

The progress from keep to beach was slow, measured, no more than two abreast. The strong helped the infirm, and the young steadied old bones. Liam counted the steps under his breath. Jacob crouched unmoving on the boy's shoulder, either asleep or engrossed. Mal suspected the former.

When the front of the procession touched sand, it broke in two, spreading a single line north and south along the shore. Mal followed the Selkirk's corpse to the pier. His mother lingered on the sand, hesitating before the planks. Biaz murmured a word, and the corpse-­bearers paused. The Masterhealer's song dulled to a low, flat, note, and the burial shroud dimmed to half-­light.

Liam's fingers tugged on Mal's tunic. Mal bent at the waist, and Liam spoke into his ear.

“Is that
The Laughing Queen
?” the boy hissed, sounding worried. “They've changed her all about, haven't they, but I recognize her marks.”

The lad had a good eye for details, but Mal was surprised Liam had noted the change in the near dark.

“They've put up the black sails,” he replied. “And snuffed her lights. She's not
The Laughing Queen
tonight. Tonight, she's the dark barge that comes eventually for every lord of the sea, and carries him out to the deep on the wings of the rising sun.”

Mal felt Liam shiver.

“Ghost ship,” he said in a small voice.

Mal ruffled the boy's unruly hair. “It's just a tradition, lad. An old tradition.”

“I heard you say,” retorted Liam. “I heard you say, to the first mate, that there are ghosts on his ship, vengeful pirates.”

Mal winced.

“They'll not harm the living, lad. They're caught in their own time and place.”

“Still.” Liam's shiver turned to a ceaseless shuddering. “I think I'd rather be burnt or planted in the ground, my lord, than ride a ghost ship out the tide.”

Mal shivered himself, and hugged the boy close, Jacob's tail feathers rustling against his hand.

The crew of the black-­sailed ship disembarked one by one. They walked the pier silently, and took the Selkirk's weight, became shadows against the dimming sigils. One of the dark forms—­Sebastian, Mal thought—­bent the knee to Lady Selkirk before returning to tarred planks.

Brother Josef grew silent. The last glowing sigil on the Selkirk's shroud went dark. The sky was full of cloud. There was no light left, and only the slight scuff and sigh as the seamen loaded their burden onto the ship.

And then it was done.

C
OOK
SERVED
A
small feast of smoked fish and hard bread and rose-­hip wine in the bailey. The bonfire still burned; there was no need for torches but along the battlements. The wind still had not returned, and the night was pleasantly warm. Biaz played his fiddle; several men off the pier joined in a chorus of penny flutes, and there was dancing. The overwhelming scent of rose perfume was heady.

It was a celebration, not of the lord's passing, but of the new Selkirk's assumption. Mal's father was given to the sea; Mal's mother taken her place in history. She danced among her ­people, and if she didn't quite laugh, she did smile, and accepted many embraces even though Mal knew she hated being touched.

“She'll do, my lord,” Brother Josef said. “She learned well what your father had to teach.”

“And from her own father before mine,” Mal agreed. He stood on the edge of the firelight, and watched the dancers idly, and wondered how he'd make it another fourteen days so far from Wilhaiim and its king.

“You're bored,” the priest guessed. He stood at Mal's shoulder, tapping the toe of his sandal to the shrill of the pipes. “You're wondering how you ever thought to pine for it, this life.”

Mal was distantly surprised to find Brother Josef spoke true.

“It was never home,” he admitted. “My mother was home, and my brother, but my brother soon was lost to us, and my mother had my father.”

“And now you have the ear of a king, and an entire kingdom at your disposal. Is it a fine thing, that much power?”

“It's not boring,” Malachi said, and smiled.

Joseph regarded him thoughtfully.

“We have a saying, in the desert.”

“Aye?”

“God blesses best the man who listens best.”

Mal adopted an expression of polite interest.

“I'm afraid I don't understand,” he said.

“His Majesty's been too long without issue. We forgave him Lady Katherine, because the ­people loved her, and because there were whispers of conversion. But my lady has been gone now for more than a year, and His Majesty grows no younger. It's time he takes a wife.”

“A theist wife,” Mal interpreted.

“The ­people will recognize no other kind, my lord. Nor should His Majesty.”

“Perchance you have a woman in mind?”

Brother Josef smiled. “You're a clever man, my lord. We have, in fact, several.”

“We?” Mal let a flicker of irritation flatten his mouth. Brother Josef did not seem cowed. The old man was nothing if not self-­confident.

“The Elder Council, my lord. We settled the matter amongst ourselves over winter, but, as you can imagine, it takes some time to gather every signature. Even so, I have it on good authority that my brothers in Wilhaiim left the list of suggestions with the king's secretary just after first thaw.”

“His Majesty has been busy, lately.”

“Of course.” Brother Josef smiled, cheeks rosy with enthusiasm or embarrassment. Mal hoped it was the latter. For all the small port's wealth, Selkirk's Masterhealer hadn't the prestige to meddle in the affairs of court.

“Even so,” the priest pursued, “mayhap when you return home to the city, you might remind His Majesty that the security of the kingdom does indeed rest upon the strength of the royal line.”

“I assure you, Brother Josef, the kingdom is quite secure.”

“Even so,” Josef repeated. “Forgive me, but—­”

Mal interrupted, vowels purposefully clipped and cool, “When His Majesty takes a breath between the passing of one spring plague and the birthing of the next, mayhap whilst he lays seven-­day offerings on the grave of his murdered love, mayhap then I shall remind Renault that the temple wishes him to take an approved mate. For the good of the kingdom, of course.”

Brother Josef stiffened, needled either by the vocent's obvious condescension or Mal's use of the king's given name.

“My lord,” he scolded.

“Good night, Brother Josef.” Mal tipped the priest a casual bow and left him to his ambition and his wine.

B
IAZ
CAUGHT
M
AL
by the elbow as he tried to slip through the west gate.

“My lord,” he cautioned. “The wind is rising, the torches unlit.”

“I'm aware,” Mal replied, trying for gentleness instead of further irritation. “And well used to conducting business in the unfriendly dark.”

“Yes, my lord.” Biaz hesitated. “Don't linger long. The tide rises with the wind.”

“Thank you, Shannon.” Mal squeezed the housecarl's shoulder in reassurance. “I'll be but a moment.”

The staircase was wet, a rain or mist dripping over rock and step. Mal summoned a thin light. He walked lightly, guide rope ignored. The music of his mother's celebration followed him down the cliff and onto the sand, where the wind off the water chased skirling pipes away.

Sand kicked up around his ankles. He tasted foam on his lips. He could hear the rub of ship against the pier, and the flap of black sails. Mal kicked off his sandals, flexed his toes in cool sand, remembering the pleasures of youth.